J'ai vu le loup
by ACleverName
Summary: The Seventh Doctor, Ace, and a dark fairy tale.


J'ai Vu Le Loup

"_If a fairy story as a kind is worth reading at all, it is worthy to be written for and read by adults." _–J. R. R. Tolkien

"_J'ai vu le loup, le r'nard, le lièvre,_

_J'ai vu le loup, le r'nard, danser._

_C'est moi-même qui les ai r'virés." _–old French song

_Without the Doctor, she would have never survived._

Ace reread the opening words to the children's book, glancing through the dog-eared pages at the watercolor illustrations. Though the lettering and binding seemed old, the manuscript was printed in a soft cover, almost like a comic book. She got off the armchair, book in hand, and walked from the library into the TARDIS console room. "Professor?" she called, blinking involuntarily at the brightness of the roundel-stamped room.

"Mmmm?" She heard the Doctor's answering murmur, but she didn't at first see him. She bent over and observed the pair of legs wiggling meditatively under the central column.

"Professor," she repeated, holding the book toward him. "What is this?"

A hand reached out for an astro-rectifier. It was followed by a frowning face and mussed dark hair. The Doctor gave her a two-second appraisal. "Offhand, I'd say it was a book." He disappeared again, clanking the wrench against the TARDIS' undercarriage.

"Yeah, no kidding." She rolled her eyes. I mean, what is it?" She looked at the cover again. "Professor!"

"Ace! Can't you see that I'm working?" There was more banging and a muffled curse.

She cleared her throat. " 'Princess Red Riding Hood the Second had the pouty, cherubic look of her mother, even at twenty: wide-set china blue eyes with impossibly long lashes and cherry blossom lips.'" Ace scoffed, turning the page to look at the illustration. "I'll say. 'Even her blonde hair had the burnished look of a cultured doll.'"

"Magic surgery," the Doctor muttered.

"What?"

"She'd had magic surgery, that's why she looked like a doll." There was contempt in his voice.

"Who?"

"Red Riding Hood the Second!" he snapped.

"So you _have_ read this. I thought it'd been put in the library by mistake." There was no response. Ace burst out laughing. " 'The visiting physician was a short and lumpish man who looked as though he belonged in a bakery rather than the medical profession'!"

The Doctor emerged, face bright red, and tried to snatch the book away from her. "Ace, give me that!" She eluded him, running across the console room and holding the book out of his reach. As she was taller than he was, it wasn't very difficult. She flipped the page to show him the illustration. "The royal physician" looked undeniably like the Doctor, down to the floppy Panama hat. He frowned. "Doctor, this is you! This whole book's about you!" He glared. She continued to read, " 'Princess Riding Hood the Second's tiara easily overshadowed her husband's rather mincing crown. No one knew the man's name anymore; marrying into the Riding Hoods had reduced him to obscurity.'"

"He had remarkable teeth, that prince," the Doctor said sullenly.

Ace glanced at him and back to the book. " 'All princes were remarkably handsome, so handsome in fact their features faded into the background, but his one distinguishing feature were his extraordinarily bright and garish teeth.' Huh." The Doctor held his hand out for the book. Reluctantly, Ace placed it on his palm. He rolled it up and was about to bury it in his coat pocket. Then he looked at it, almost affectionately. "So, what is this?" Ace asked, when he failed to settle himself under the column again. "Is this a true story or what?"

He looked at her darkly. "True? Define true."

"Fairy tales aren't true," Ace said evenly. "I grew up a long time ago, I know that." She crossed her arms, looking baffled. "Yet there you are, with Little Red Riding Hood."

"Not Little Red Riding Hood," the Doctor snapped. "Her daughter and granddaughter. Or were you not paying attention?"

She wasn't going to let it go. "_The _Little Red Riding Hood? The one who almost got eaten by a wolf? The whole 'What big eyes you have' an' stuff?"

"That was artistic license on the part of the Grimm Brothers," the Doctor said. A mischievous smile appeared on his lips. "I, uh, misplaced another such book in their workshop after a visit once and . . ." He shrugged. "They got all the details wrong, but you know how it is with writers. Came back to get it, of course, but it was too late. That's the trouble with time travel." He sighed. "That was a long time ago. I was much younger then. Much more foolish."

Ace laughed delightedly. "The Grimms got Little Red Riding Hood from you? Wicked!" Failing to receive a response, she waited for him to elaborate. "What's the real story then, Doctor? You can't just not tell me now."

He handed the book back to her. "Read it, then. Straight from the horse's mouth."

She handed it back to him. "No," she said quietly. "Straight from the Doctor's mouth."

The Doctor pulled up a chair, sinking into it. Ace leaned on the arm of the chair. The Doctor flipped through the pages distractedly. "The planet is called Minn. Its morphology is similar to Earth's, and that's what attracted colonists in the 41st century. However, as is so often the case with humans, they ignored that there were already intelligent, indigenous species living on the planet. Some were humanoid in appearance, others not."

"And some looked like wolves and had a taste for human flesh?" Ace suggested.

"The planet's original inhabitants were marginalized, made pariahs. I don't know why anyone was so surprised when a little girl was attacked." He inhaled quietly. "That was the turning point. The colonists had found an event to rally around and fought the planet's inhabitants to near extinction." He jabbed a finger at the book. "_This_ story is all about settling the scores."

Ace looked down at it. "How did Red Riding Hood get to be queen? Far as I can tell, she never did much of anything."

The Doctor shrugged. "A figurehead, a symbol. How did a young man with a penchant for chopping down beanstalks become a prince? Why venerate the girl who made her stepmother dance in red-hot slippers?" Ace sensed he was not expecting an answer from her.

"What was wrong with the baby, Professor?" she asked quietly. "I mean, Red Riding Hood's granddaughter. It says here that, 'Looking at the baby balanced on Princess Riding Hood's knee, you would think she had no condition at all.' But her mum's all upset and says she'll never be queen."

"She was infected," said the Doctor. "With a disease that caused her to shy from the light, which caused her skin to grow scaly and hairy, to make her jaundiced and sickly." His voice had been soft, almost tender, but now it rose passionately. " 'The physician watched the royal child with pity, for he had heard the awful tale of the Princess cutting her hand and the royal child there, to lap up the blood.'"

Ace drew back. He was quoting the book from memory. "What, like a vampire? Like a werewolf?"

His face was twisted in rage and disgust. "Don't be stupid!" he snapped. Then his look softened. "Ace, it's a genetic disease. Her mother's line must have carried it all the way from Earth. It had lain dormant, but the Wolves of Minn still had influence over the planet, over the workings of disease." He sighed. "That was their revenge."

"So, what happened to her?"

"Her name was Adele, by the way." He eyed her. "To prevent anarchy and dissolution of the state, they made her disappear. Her parents and her grandmother did." Ace shrunk back from his obvious rancor.

"But it says here that the Princess suggested they kill her. 'Even the protests of the Prince were to no avail.'" She regarded him carefully. "It was you, wasn't it? You were at the court and you saved her!" She tried to imagine the Doctor carrying around a baby and couldn't fathom it. Then again, he'd never given her a straight answer about being Merlin—hadn't Merlin taken care of the baby Arthur? "What, did you bring her to the TARDIS and raise her up?" The Doctor had once, in passing, mentioned a granddaughter who had traveled with him.

"I gave her to a family to take care of," the Doctor said simply.

"What family?" Ace asked. She snatched back the book when he didn't answer. She flipped through pages rapidly. She stared at the watercolors. "You gave her to the Wolves?"

"Not to the Wolves," he said shortly. "To the Halflings. An ancient race of hybrids."

"Half-Wolf, you mean?" She pulled back from him, half in awe and half in repugnance. "You knew she would marry one of them, that she would start a war to reclaim her birthright!"

"I knew," the Doctor said loudly, "that this was a chance for peace, and maybe the only one." He flipped to the last page of the book. "And it turned out all right, didn't it?"

Ace looked down. " 'Queen Adele restored peace to the planet of Minn, and her reign was remembered as the most prosperous in her kingdom's history.'" She paused. " 'Her victories she dedicated to the traveling physician who gave her the means to cure her disease, by taking action.' That's a bit much, don't you think?" The Doctor was uncomfortably silent. Ace looked at the cover. "Who wrote this? Did you?"

"She did," he snapped. Then, quieter: "Adele did." He smiled. "Quite the propagandist, wasn't she? A bit like Shakespeare writing all that nonsense for Henry Tudor. Made good drama, but as for _true . . ." _

Ace got off the chair. "Did she give this to you?"

"She sent a message. I happened to be in that neck of the woods. She wanted to reward me by more conventional means—"

Ace smiled knowingly. "Money and power and stuff?"

"—but in the end she contented herself by printing the book." He was still smiling.

Ace didn't expect a serious answer. "Professor, she wasn't in love with your or anything?"

He didn't reply for a long time. Ace inhaled. "But in the end, the Riding Hoods got what they wanted," he said. "The Grimms wrote their side of the story. That's the one ingrained in popular memory." He turned to her. "You know, I once had a long chat with Sigmund Freud—"

"What, from his couch?"

He ignored her. "—and there he was, reducing all the legends of his future to psychological hang-ups." He frowned. "You don't even want to know what he said about Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf."

Ace put her hands in her pockets. "Bet I can guess."

The Doctor looked once more at the book. "Put this back where you found it, would you, Ace?" Absently he moved toward the console, sorting through his tool box as he went.

"Doctor—" Ace began.

"And on your way back from the library, put the kettle on, please." His voice was firm. "I think we could do with some tea."

"Speak for yourself," she said sullenly. His hand paused over the astro-rectifier on the ground, as though he were about to say something. Ace shrugged and walked out. She strode into the library, frowning, about to fling the book onto the shelf where she'd found it. "Guess the Doctor's made a lot of people grateful," she muttered. She curled her fingers in her jacket pockets. She picked up the book from the shelf and rolled it soundlessly into her back pocket.


End file.
